Diatoms: One-Celled Wonders

Publication date: 2005-06-08

Topics: diatoms, evolution, museum, kiosk, biodiversity, texas, flash

Language: English

This appears to be the museum kiosk for "Diatoms: One-Celled Wonders," part of the "Explore Evolution" exhibit in the Hall of Biodiversity at the Texas Natural Science Center in the Texas Memorial Museum building, circa 2005.

Pictures of diatoms cycle until the mouse moves, at which point 34 diatoms can be browsed using the left and right arrows on the display. The diatoms of Yellowstone Lake can also be viewed in a separate section by clicking the link in the lower right.

The Flash animation provided here was extracted from a Flash Player 7 projector (also included in this item's files) using dump_projector, so a full Windows installation would not have to be emulated. The local drive file paths referenced in the SWF were patched using FFDec to better support the online Internet Archive emulation. The original projector and supporting files in their original locations are in the "source" folder.

It was retrieved from what appears to have been a computer running a kiosk display. It is unclear if it is the complete contents of the kiosk, nor whether it was the computer running the kiosk, or just a computer running the kiosk. The computer was an Intel Celeron socket 478 2GHz with 256MB RAM and a 40GB HDD in a Shuttle SS51G chassis, running Windows XP, build by a vendor named Reason out of Minneapolis, MN.

The exhibit includes placeholder content for the last two diatom examples (33 and 34); it is unclear if these had content in the live exhibit, or if attendees who viewed all 32 previous diatoms would have seen the placeholder text.

Credits within the exhibit content include:

Vladimir Nikolaev, Russian Academy of Sciences, Komarov Botanical Institute
Marina Potapova, Academy of Natural Sciences-Philadelphia, Patrick Center for Environmental Research
Diane Winter, University of Nebraska, Department of Geosciences
Dr. Edward Duke, Engineering and Mining Experiment Station, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

"Scientist Ed Theriot" also makes an appearance (Dr. Theriot was director of the museum from 1997 to 2022).

The Wayback Machine includes many captures of the museum's site and the exhibit pages. The first to reference the "Explore Evolution" exhibit is from February 2007. The final capture before the exhibit closed is from January 2017. A "Diatoms" poster can be seen in the left side of the image on the page. The exhibit closed in June 2017.